Exercise and fitness: cardio machines: fat burn vs aerobic course

Self-tutoring about pre-set workouts on cardio machines: the tutor mentions an observation.

After age 30, most of us on a cardio machine probably hope to lose fat. Moreover, we’ve typically heard fat burn connected with aerobic activity. Therefore, when an exercise machine offers fat burn, but also aerobic workout, as separate choices, what might one select?

I’ve heard that fat burn might target your heart rate slightly lower than aerobic workout, since the optimum activity level for burning fat might be a little less than for cardio activity. However, to get that athletic appearance most people want, fat burning seems not quite enough; you might need a little higher activity rate to compose the body the way people hope for. Therefore, I usually select aerobic workout, rather than fat burn.

Yesterday, however, stepping onto the elliptical stepper (which has become my favourite machine, but that’s for another post), I opted for fat burn. Wondering what to expect, I began stepping while placing the hill grade at about 10 and the resistance at about five. The pre-set fat burn workout would last an hour, the machine declared.

Knowing not much what to expect, I stepped along, reaching a pace of around 140. Soon the resistance and hill increased automatically, so my pace went down: the exertion was beginning.

This fat burn workout featured higher peaks than I’d expect with an aerobic one; about 25% of the way in, at the first peak, my pace was only 82 steps per minute, and my heart rate, 166 (168 is my safe maximum, based on my age). I was impressed: this fat burn workout was serious. I descended the other side of the peak, with a corresponding increase in step rate, and so on.

All told, I think there were three or four such peaks. After the five-minute cool down, I received the news of 766 calories. Never before had I faced such a challenging, and interesting, workout on a step elliptical.

Did it burn fat? Time will tell, I guess. However, I’d put its activity level at or above what I would have expected from an aerobic workout.